


Making Arrangements

by Sunshine170



Series: In Absentia [5]
Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:58:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshine170/pseuds/Sunshine170
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’d wanted it to be by the beach and she wanted it to be a quiet affair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making Arrangements

_You would have hated the whole thing…._  He thinks to himself as he walks along the beach thinking about a few days ago when he had watched Olivia’s pyre burn at a distance in the waters.

It was a showy funeral… the opposite of what Olivia would have wanted, what she had asked him for in case of this eventuality. (Of course they’ve had those conversations, they’d have been fools not to… given their jobs.)

She’d wanted it to be by the beach, she’d told him…that time they were spending a precious work free weekend at Cape Cod, when they could afford the leisure of watching the sun rise sitting on the beach.

She’d wanted it to be by the beach and she wanted it to be a quiet affair.

One out of two ain’t so bad, he reckons.

HQ had commandeered the whole thing, turned it  into a full blown spectacle. A hero’s sendoff…21 guns salute, the whole shebang.

Something about public morale, making a statement in times of fear… he doesn’t remember the words the PR head had rattled off as he sat there in shock, trying to process what had just happened a few hours ago.

What did he care anyway? She was gone…it didn’t matter anymore.

Nothing did.

He let them have it. Let them march and salute and fire guns and do everything they wanted to do to  make a martyr out of her, make her death ‘worthy’ instead of what it really was , a desperate act of  personal vendetta by an old and bitter man.

The only thing he didn’t let them take was the beach.

The last in a lifetime’s tradition of half-promises he’d made to her.

_Ashes to ashes,_

_Dust to dust…_

The woman he loved- blood and flesh and bones all reduced to cinders- on its way to being  carbon, that building block of all things living.

Walter would find that scientifically poetic…he almost smiles.

Somewhere in those Atlantic waters, everywhere and nowhere at the same time were the traces of her.

Somewhere the sea-air carried the lingering fragrance of her perfume.

Somewhere in the waves that lap at his shoes on the cold winter morning, a journey of a million miles ending at his feet…there was something of her.

It’s fitting he thinks….the universe had consumed her in its vastness, absorbed her and left him standing on the shorelines grasping at air and sea.

And yet here, today….he feels close to her. He feels like she was right there standing besides him, holding his hand.

His phone buzzes. It’s Ella, letting him know that they’re at the hanger and that they’re ready for him.

 _“I am going to see you again Olivia…_ ” he whispers staring at the unusually calm ocean, hands in his jeans pockets, fingering the metal of her wedding ring. He’d kept it close since they handed it to him at the morgue.

_“I am going to see you again and everything will be okay.  The world will be okay. We will be okay…”_

_“And if I don’t make it…”_  He pauses trying not to feel the uneasy fear inside him, trying not to think about how many ways he could fail at this.

  _“Well then…I guess I’ll still be seeing you sweetheart.”_ He chuckles, dry…pained, half-hearted. 

He takes in the sunrise one last time, slowly peeking out of the waters. It’s beautiful…full of promise… like that day before everything had gone to hell, when it had just been the two of them in his rickety twin bed laughing over Walter’s tendency for breakfast in the nude.

 _“Wish me luck.”_   He says, unable to help a smile at the thought of going back to that day, to that time, to living his life all over again with the person who meant everything to him and experiencing all the joys of the past 15 years through new eyes… hopefully without the world falling apart around them this time.

 _“And don’t forget what we discussed…”_ He laughs then, already turning around to make his way back to the car.

_“Irish wake and everybody gets hammered on J.D.”_


End file.
